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HOW DO YOU MAKE A TRADITIONAL RPG
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CloseLiberty
Potions I just recently make them heal most HP from the get-go. I've always been annoyed by people not making them heal enough, so I figured in my own games they heal at least half your HP. It really depends on how much HP your characters get. If you stay with low numbers, you can get away with hard numbers, but if you're dealing with large numbers, percentage is nice.
Ultimately it depends mostly on cost vs gold dropped vs damage taken. Do a bit of number crunching. You basically want them to be useful enough that you don't have to worry about the player being able to afford at least a few pieces of armour in the next pit stop, but still be able to live.
In my latest game items are only found via enemy drops, so I'm making them more effective - adding regen buffs and increased defences for some.
The number crunching makes sense. I had to fix gold prices a lot for Kiddos so that you could actually afford to enjoy some armor instead of one or two pieces for a single kiddo.
i think "advanced" item drops from enemies are nice. if the party has very little healing on the party you should probably also sell really basic pots in towns imo, just so the player has something to fall back on, but it wouldn't be necessary if the party has a decent amount of healing power. except if they do, then why do you need healing items? kalsfnlkasflsadhfls traditional rpgs
Isrieri
Traditional RPGs are more about concept and less about the actual gameplay bits.
They've got roots in old DnD stuff, and the draw of that is that "You are in a cave, what could be in that cave? Who the hell knows??! What do you do?"
And then you do whatever. Classic RPGs are all about exploration and feeling out the world. The more fleshed out it is, the better off you are as a dev.
Making it short is also a plus, because these days no one has the patience for long games anymore. (which is unfortunate)
The reason tradtional RPGs are laid out the way they are with the level ups and stuff is because for the non-nerdy-non-DnD playing masses, it was a lot easier to just have the game keep track of all your stats and shit rather than putting points in them yourself. You could just worry about the story and shit.
If you have a simple system that a 6 year old kid can understand, and a neat concept with a compelling story, then you have a traditional RPG vidya game.
The phrase of the day is "capturing the imagination."
this makes sense but it just sounds... lazy to me. ugh. a lot of the answers here all seem to be "because it's an easy game for idiots to play" and it's just... why? at least have difficulty modes so that people who don't want to be bored out of their minds can face enemies with some teeth. and actually balance your progression so that you're not ubergods by the end. i don't see the point in that because yes, i like digital games because they keep track of my numbers for me (that's a major plus in my book, it's also why i play MTGO instead of cardboard magic) but i also... i want to have something interesting going on besides just words. a nice world doesn't mean anything if it's not enjoyable to waltz around in.
basically i don't know why the genre exists in the state that it has, or why we get remakes like FF1 Dawn of Souls that I have to download a mod for just to make it not piss-easy.
CashmereCat
I don't know! I really don't know!
On the other hand, why be traditional when you can be unique? ;)
because my games are all built out of a program designed for the traditional and i find it curious why so many people try to emulate what i see as a tired breed of game! a lot of traditional rpgs go against my design philosophies and make it difficult for me to comprehend why you're giving out power in so many ways. honestly this topic was about the mechanics of the games, although the talk about worlds is interesting too.
If you're talking about 'why are traditional RPGs so easy' then that's a very different question. There's a lot to this topic and I could probably write a whole article on the evolution of 'traditional RPG' but if I had to guess I'd say they were made easier to make them more accessible to a wider audience.
The earliest RPGs that shaped the genre (Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy, mostly. There were others but I'd say it was these that were most influential) were mostly about exploring a world and learning to master your environment. Nowadays RPGs just make you walk forward for twelve hours. How times have changed.
The earliest RPGs that shaped the genre (Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy, mostly. There were others but I'd say it was these that were most influential) were mostly about exploring a world and learning to master your environment. Nowadays RPGs just make you walk forward for twelve hours. How times have changed.
It's weird, because so many RPGs spend a lot of time coming up with and balancing clever battle mechanics, but 90% of the battles are still just grind. FF games since FF5 have had unique battle systems in some form or another. Same with Baten Kaitos, Bravely Default, and Paper Mario; all use their own unique battle systems, but they still center around the basic Explore > Random Battle > Potion > Repeat x3 > Boss formula. It's like they're trying to patch-job something that's broken at the core.
BUT... if you want to have a long dungeon area that builds up suspense before a boss, you gotta fill it with monsters so it stays tense and not boring. AND since unique battles are a lot of design work and mentally exhausting for the player, you just add random battles and center the game's focus on attrition, with boss battles being the exciting and interesting exception. It's not the best, but it's just good enough to work while also building up a cool world and setting and boss battles, which are the real meat.
I would love to see how exploration-based dungeons could be designed without an attrition mechanic, or at least, without random / repeated battles.
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As far as difficulty modes for RPGs go, it can't just be "buff all the monsters stats'" because that just makes the game take longer. Maybe a hard mode would mean less battles, but each one being hand-crafted and super hard? I remember Bravely Default had the option to turn off random battles or make them harder, but neither one of those options affected my idiotic strategy of "make every character a monk and have them each attack 4 times on the first turn".
BUT... if you want to have a long dungeon area that builds up suspense before a boss, you gotta fill it with monsters so it stays tense and not boring. AND since unique battles are a lot of design work and mentally exhausting for the player, you just add random battles and center the game's focus on attrition, with boss battles being the exciting and interesting exception. It's not the best, but it's just good enough to work while also building up a cool world and setting and boss battles, which are the real meat.
I would love to see how exploration-based dungeons could be designed without an attrition mechanic, or at least, without random / repeated battles.
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As far as difficulty modes for RPGs go, it can't just be "buff all the monsters stats'" because that just makes the game take longer. Maybe a hard mode would mean less battles, but each one being hand-crafted and super hard? I remember Bravely Default had the option to turn off random battles or make them harder, but neither one of those options affected my idiotic strategy of "make every character a monk and have them each attack 4 times on the first turn".
author=Rine
Edit: As a note, 'Traditional JRPG' is a bit of a misnomer. There were tons of cross-pollination in the early days, and it still is going on. The original Final Fantasy has a monster list practically taken from D&D's monster manual, with the serial numbers filed off (Gazer? Beholder. Oh Hello Tiamat. And hey, there's some illithids, called 'mind flayers', clever). A lot of older and current JRPGs were influenced by Wizardry as well, if you play one where you are wandering around a dungeon in first person view...especially if it has a customizable party from a group of classes, and rows of characters. It is really hard to tell some of the basic gameplay features apart in those early years. It is even noticeable in the broader culture. Record of the Lodoss War was basically the guy taking his D&D campaign and fleshing out the story and characters.
For the curious, here's a complete list of FF1's bestiary and their equivalent (if any) in D&D. EYE / PHANTOM / etc. originally was a straight up rip of a Beholder too but the copyrights as a iconic D&D monster was a potential source of issues so it was changed in localization. You can see the original sprite of it on The Cutting Room Floor.
